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F Macdonald

Biographic Data

ID21955
NAMEF Macdonald
GIVEN NAMESF
FAMILY NAMEMacdonald
SIGNATUREMACDONALD F
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Waikato
ORCID0000-0002-8188-5474
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS35
TOTAL CITATIONS226
AUTHOR COUNT35
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1969
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX9
  • The Pains of Being an Older Prisoner: Healthcare, Social Care and Dying in Custody

    Open Access•Paul Gavin, F Macdonald et al.•ARTICLE•Social Sciences•2026

    The ageing prisoner population in England and Wales presents a significant and growing challenge for both criminal justice and social policy. Despite increasing recognition of the complex health and social care needs of this cohort, these needs have not been adequately addressed by successive governments. This conceptual paper critically analyses the broader structural, policy, and practice-based limitations associated with the provision of healt…

  • A diagram for eruption: Charismatic Christian revival in 1970s Melanesia

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Hau Journal of Ethnographic Theory•2026

  • Scottish locale example no. 1: Levenhall Links, East Lothian

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Scottish Geographical Journal•2025

    Levenhall Links, an artificial coastal site in eastern Scotland, is examined in relation to the long history of coal extraction and power generation in Scotland; to the aerial geography of mine workings and underground geography of pits and tunnels; and to the railways, sentiments and politics that connected them. The origins of the site as a discard pile are traced, following the construction and operation of networked infrastructures that inclu…

  • The politics of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity: Religious language, charismatic authority, and temporality in a Melanesian revival movement

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•History and Anthropology•2024

    Through an analysis of a series of revival movements that erupted across the Melanesian island of Malaita in the 1970s, this article articulates a strongly political reading of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (P/c). A series of charismatic eruptions that swept Malaita in 1970 effected an overhaul of the epistemological, organizational, and eschatological frameworks imposed upon local Christians by foreign missionaries. Such rapid profusions …

  • A Review of the Healthcare and Social Care Needs of the Older Prisoner Population in England and Wales

    Open Access•Paul Gavin, Cody Normitta Porter et al.•ARTICLE•Social Sciences•2024

    In recent years, research on older prisoners in England and Wales has expanded significantly, and the term “older prisoner” is now well entrenched in the prison-based literature. Those prisoners who are over the age of 50 are now the fastest growing demographic in the prison system and they present with a wide range of specific health and social care needs. This paper provides an overview of the main challenges facing older prisoners in the conte…

  • Full Issue

    Rashi K Shukla, M Dimock et al.•ARTICLE•Humboldt Journal of Social…•2022

    This special issue of the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations visits one of the most polarizing policy debates in the US. In 2012, voters in Washington and Colorado passed initiatives that legalized the recreational use of marijuana. In fact, there were about 75,000 more votes cast in support of marijuana legalization in Colorado than were given to reelect President Obama. Yet according to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, Demo…

  • Tourism: Between Place and Performance

    Claudia Bell, Jeremy Boissevain et al.•BOOK•Tourism•2022•Cited by: 4

    Many accounts of tourism have adopted an almost paradigmatic visual model of the gaze. This collection presents an expanded notion of spectatorship with a more dynamic sense of embodied and performed engagement with places. The approach resonates with ideas in anthropology, sociology, and geography on performance, invented traditions, constructed places and traveling cultures. Contributions highlight the often contradictory, contested and paradox…

  • A Thousand Eruptions: Religious Intensification in Melanesia and Beyond

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Religion and Society•2022

    Drawing on ethnographic and historical material from Melanesia and beyond, this article explores movements of religious intensification within Christianity. The morphology of religious intensification is defined by a multiplicity of localized upsurges laterally interconnected by means of decentralized packs of inspired participants. Charismatic intensification is above all an intensification of affect produced through the workings and movements o…

  • Positioning Culture within Pacific Christianities

    Open Access•F Macdonald, C Falck•ARTICLE•The Australian Journal of…•2020

  • How to make fire: Resonant rupture within Melanesian charismatic revivalism

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•The Australian Journal of…•2020

    Recent theoretical developments within the anthropology of Christianity have shifted away from conceptualising the uptake of Pentecostal‐charismatic Christianity in polarised terms of rupture versus continuity towards more inclusive, dynamic interpretations that appreciate both underlying cultural synergies alongside deeply felt projects of personal and collective moral and spiritual transformation. Drawing upon Marshall's concept of ‘resonant ru…

  • Melanesia burning: Religious revolution in the western Pacific

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Journal of the Polynesian Society•2019•Cited by: 3

    In the history of Pacific Christianity, the explosion of revival activity within Melanesia during the 1970s remains an untold story. Within this regional spiritual upheaval, ecstatic Pentecostalist phenomena spread with unprecedented rapidity, intensity and geographical scope. As a result of these movements, Christianity assumed an importance in Melanesia in a way it never had before, as local congregations redefined their church life and spiritu…

  • God Was Here First: Value, Hierarchy, and Conversion in a Melanesian Christianity

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Ethnos•2019•Cited by: 9•References: 25

    Throughout the world, conversion to evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity produces what Joel Robbins calls 'duplex cultural formations', whereby surviving aspects of local cosmology and worldview are brought into tension with paramount Christian values through a process of critical evaluation. I explore the dynamics of this process within Oksapmin understandings of human and cosmic origins. Traditional anthropogonic models explaining the emerg…

  • Women, mobile phones, and M16s: Contemporary New Guinea highlands warfare

    Open Access•F Macdonald, Jonathan Kirami•ARTICLE•The Australian Journal of…•2017

    This paper reports upon a series of recent developments in New Guinea highlands warfare. Building upon existing literature highlighting the deep influence of modernity within this context, we draw attention to two particular developments yet to be reported in the literature and which appear to be of special significance. Through an analysis of Aiya warfare, Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea, we document the direct and increasing invol…

  • Magic: A Theory from the South, by Ernesto De Martino

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Anthropological Forum•2017

    This article reviews the book: “Magic: A Theory from the South”, by Ernesto De Martino, translated and annotated by Dorothy Louise Zinn

  • Cosmology and Crisis in Oksapmin, Papua New Guinea

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Oceania•2017•Cited by: 2•References: 22

    This article explores Oksapmin imaginings of two interrelated crises: the temporary closure of the Ok Tedi gold and copper mine and a prolonged drought, both of which occurred in Papua New Guinea throughout 2015. Local interpretations were notable for assigning causality to a variety of indigenous magical and spiritual forces despite the fact that the Oksapmin have been evangelical Christians for over 50 years and have more recently been influenc…

  • From Blood to Oil: Mining, Cosmology, and Human Sacrifice in Central New Guinea

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Oceania•2016

    This article explores the intersection between cosmological history and mining geography among the Oksapmin of West Sepik Province. I show that the recent intrusion of mining activity into the local area has catalysed a revival of indigenous religious traditions to explain the occurrence and ownership of the precious materials believed to exist within the ground. Through an analysis of these parts of local cosmological history used to explain con…

  • Lucifer Is Behind Me: The Diabolisation of Oksapmin Witchcraft as Negative Cosmological Integration

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Canberra Anthropology•2015•Cited by: 9•References: 26

    This paper examines the diabolisation of Oksapmin tamam (here glossed as 'witchcraft') as an example of negative cosmological integration. The article takes as its point of departure Robbins's model of cultural syncretism developed in a series of recent papers, wherein diabolisation occurs as people insert those aspects of their indigenous religion that do not contravene the Christian God's paramount creative power into the Christian cosmos as re…

  • Always been Christian: Mythic Conflation among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Anthropological Forum•2014•Cited by: 10•References: 34

    Across the world and throughout history, people have negotiated religious and social change by marshalling the mythological resources at their disposal. In cases of conversion to Christianity, this dynamic has often taken the form of constructing an isomorphism between traditional mythical narratives and those learned from the Bible, a manifestation of the process I here call mythic conflation . In this article I explore how the Oksapmin of the W…

  • The ruins of Erskine Beveridge

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Transactions of the Institute of…•2013•Cited by: 14•References: 37

    This is a narrative essay, the animating purpose of which is stylistic as much as analytic. It is a story; and, unusually for academic geography, the story is primary. The essay has no deferred object; it is not ‘about’ something more academic but nor does it abrogate the work of analysis. It narrates the story of the Scottish archaeologist Erskine Beveridge and his family, as told through a prolonged encounter with the ruins of his house situate…

  • Doomsday Fieldwork, or, How to Rescue Gaelic Culture? The Salvage Paradigm in Geography, Archaeology, and Folklore, 1955 - 62

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Environment and Planning D…•2011•Cited by: 11•References: 81

    Amid a resurgence of interest in histories of scientific fieldwork and in the geographies of the Cold War, this paper presents a comparative history of field practice across the distinct epistemic traditions of geography, archaeology, and folklore. The paper follows the intellectual practices of three research teams attempting to 'rescue' Gaelic culture from the development of a missile-testing station in the Scottish Hebrides. The aims of the pa…

  • Observant States: Geopolitics and Visual Culture

    F Macdonald, Fraser Mcdonald et al.•BOOK•Observant States Geopolitics And…•2010

    Geopolitics is changing. The conduct of war and peace is being transformed by our increasing dependence on visual images and practices. Satellite surveillance, computer games, streaming video, retinal scanning and mobile phone cameras are just some of the technologies that are shaping contemporary geopolitics. From the horrors of 9/11 and Abu Ghraib to the mechanical, mundane functioning of airport biometrics, geopolitical truths are established …

  • Space and the Atom: On the Popular Geopolitics of Cold War Rocketry

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Geopolitics•2008•Cited by: 12

    This paper considers the imbricated domains of space exploration and Cold War geopolitics by following the trajectory of the ‘Corporal’, the world's first guided missile authorised to carry a nuclear warhead. It examines the popular geopolitics of rocketry as both a technology of mass destruction and as a vehicle for the transcendent dreams of extra-terrestrial discovery. Avoiding both technical and statist accounts, the paper shows how these tec…

  • Anti- Astropolitik — outer space and the orbit of geography

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Progress in Human Geography•2007•Cited by: 55•References: 26

    This paper aims to establish outer space as a mainstream concern of critical geography. More than half a century after humans first cast their instruments into orbit, contemporary human geography has been slow to explore the myriad connections that tie social life on Earth to the celestial realm. My starting point is a return to an early-modern geographical imagination that acknowledges the reciprocity between heaven and earth. Although other dis…

  • The last outpost of Empire: Rockall and the Cold War

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Journal of Historical Geography•2006•Cited by: 9•References: 5

  • Geopolitics and 'the vision thing: Regarding Britain and America's first nuclear missile

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Transactions of the Institute of…•2006•Cited by: 42•References: 19

    Critical geopolitics, despite its radical ambitions, has been reluctant to shift its emphasis from the figure of the geopolitical tactician, 'decisive' events and the agency of the military-state. This paper, in common with recent work on 'popular geopolitics', offers a different agenda. It takes up the story of Britain and America's first nuclear missile - the US-made 'Corporal'- through the testimony of a self-described 'space-daft' schoolboy w…

Next
  • Anti- Astropolitik — outer space and the orbit of geography

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Progress in Human Geography•2007•Cited by: 55•References: 26

    This paper aims to establish outer space as a mainstream concern of critical geography. More than half a century after humans first cast their instruments into orbit, contemporary human geography has been slow to explore the myriad connections that tie social life on Earth to the celestial realm. My starting point is a return to an early-modern geographical imagination that acknowledges the reciprocity between heaven and earth. Although other dis…

  • Geopolitics and 'the vision thing: Regarding Britain and America's first nuclear missile

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Transactions of the Institute of…•2006•Cited by: 42•References: 19

    Critical geopolitics, despite its radical ambitions, has been reluctant to shift its emphasis from the figure of the geopolitical tactician, 'decisive' events and the agency of the military-state. This paper, in common with recent work on 'popular geopolitics', offers a different agenda. It takes up the story of Britain and America's first nuclear missile - the US-made 'Corporal'- through the testimony of a self-described 'space-daft' schoolboy w…

  • Towards a spatial theory of worship: Some observations from Presbyterian Scotland

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Social & Cultural Geography•2002•Cited by: 21•References: 33

    In an attempt to add theoretical depth to the emerging literature on geographies of religion, this paper pays particular attention to the concepts of space and worship in relation to the practice of evangelical Presbyterianism in the Scottish Highlands. I argue that 'worship', a term which has no universal application in religious studies, has been thinly conceived in geographical literature and must be examined both as process and as practice. W…

  • The ruins of Erskine Beveridge

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Transactions of the Institute of…•2013•Cited by: 14•References: 37

    This is a narrative essay, the animating purpose of which is stylistic as much as analytic. It is a story; and, unusually for academic geography, the story is primary. The essay has no deferred object; it is not ‘about’ something more academic but nor does it abrogate the work of analysis. It narrates the story of the Scottish archaeologist Erskine Beveridge and his family, as told through a prolonged encounter with the ruins of his house situate…

  • Space and the Atom: On the Popular Geopolitics of Cold War Rocketry

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Geopolitics•2008•Cited by: 12

    This paper considers the imbricated domains of space exploration and Cold War geopolitics by following the trajectory of the ‘Corporal’, the world's first guided missile authorised to carry a nuclear warhead. It examines the popular geopolitics of rocketry as both a technology of mass destruction and as a vehicle for the transcendent dreams of extra-terrestrial discovery. Avoiding both technical and statist accounts, the paper shows how these tec…

  • Doomsday Fieldwork, or, How to Rescue Gaelic Culture? The Salvage Paradigm in Geography, Archaeology, and Folklore, 1955 - 62

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Environment and Planning D…•2011•Cited by: 11•References: 81

    Amid a resurgence of interest in histories of scientific fieldwork and in the geographies of the Cold War, this paper presents a comparative history of field practice across the distinct epistemic traditions of geography, archaeology, and folklore. The paper follows the intellectual practices of three research teams attempting to 'rescue' Gaelic culture from the development of a missile-testing station in the Scottish Hebrides. The aims of the pa…

  • Always been Christian: Mythic Conflation among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Anthropological Forum•2014•Cited by: 10•References: 34

    Across the world and throughout history, people have negotiated religious and social change by marshalling the mythological resources at their disposal. In cases of conversion to Christianity, this dynamic has often taken the form of constructing an isomorphism between traditional mythical narratives and those learned from the Bible, a manifestation of the process I here call mythic conflation . In this article I explore how the Oksapmin of the W…

  • God Was Here First: Value, Hierarchy, and Conversion in a Melanesian Christianity

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Ethnos•2019•Cited by: 9•References: 25

    Throughout the world, conversion to evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity produces what Joel Robbins calls 'duplex cultural formations', whereby surviving aspects of local cosmology and worldview are brought into tension with paramount Christian values through a process of critical evaluation. I explore the dynamics of this process within Oksapmin understandings of human and cosmic origins. Traditional anthropogonic models explaining the emerg…

  • Lucifer Is Behind Me: The Diabolisation of Oksapmin Witchcraft as Negative Cosmological Integration

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Canberra Anthropology•2015•Cited by: 9•References: 26

    This paper examines the diabolisation of Oksapmin tamam (here glossed as 'witchcraft') as an example of negative cosmological integration. The article takes as its point of departure Robbins's model of cultural syncretism developed in a series of recent papers, wherein diabolisation occurs as people insert those aspects of their indigenous religion that do not contravene the Christian God's paramount creative power into the Christian cosmos as re…

  • The last outpost of Empire: Rockall and the Cold War

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Journal of Historical Geography•2006•Cited by: 9•References: 5

  • Viewing Highland Scotland: Ideology, representation and the ‘natural heritage’

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Area•1998•Cited by: 8•References: 6

    This paper reconsiders the role of conservation within the cultural politics of Highland Scotland. The crofting version of the natural heritage debate is regarded as counter‐hegemonic to dominant discourses of conservation and the sporting estate. That view is given precedence in defining the ecology and landscape of the Highlands

  • Cultural Geographies in Practice: A rescue archaeology, Taransay, Scotland

    Open Access•Hayden Lorimer, Hester Parr et al.•ARTICLE•Cultural Geographies•2002•Cited by: 7

  • Tourism: Between Place and Performance

    Claudia Bell, Jeremy Boissevain et al.•BOOK•Tourism•2022•Cited by: 4

    Many accounts of tourism have adopted an almost paradigmatic visual model of the gaze. This collection presents an expanded notion of spectatorship with a more dynamic sense of embodied and performed engagement with places. The approach resonates with ideas in anthropology, sociology, and geography on performance, invented traditions, constructed places and traveling cultures. Contributions highlight the often contradictory, contested and paradox…

  • Reimagining Culture: Histories, Identities and the Gaelic Renaissance

    F Macdonald, Macdonald•REVIEW•Journal of the Royal Anthropologica…•1999•Cited by: 4

    Since the 1960s, policies to 'revive' minority cultures and languages have flourished. But what does it mean to have a 'cultural identity'? And are minorities as deeply attached to their languages and traditions as revival policies suppose? This book is a sophisticated analysis of responses to the 'Gaelic renaissance' in a Scottish Hebridean community. Its description of everyday conceptions of belonging and interpretations of cultural policy tak…

  • Melanesia burning: Religious revolution in the western Pacific

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Journal of the Polynesian Society•2019•Cited by: 3

    In the history of Pacific Christianity, the explosion of revival activity within Melanesia during the 1970s remains an untold story. Within this regional spiritual upheaval, ecstatic Pentecostalist phenomena spread with unprecedented rapidity, intensity and geographical scope. As a result of these movements, Christianity assumed an importance in Melanesia in a way it never had before, as local congregations redefined their church life and spiritu…

  • Cosmology and Crisis in Oksapmin, Papua New Guinea

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Oceania•2017•Cited by: 2•References: 22

    This article explores Oksapmin imaginings of two interrelated crises: the temporary closure of the Ok Tedi gold and copper mine and a prolonged drought, both of which occurred in Papua New Guinea throughout 2015. Local interpretations were notable for assigning causality to a variety of indigenous magical and spiritual forces despite the fact that the Oksapmin have been evangelical Christians for over 50 years and have more recently been influenc…

  • St Kilda and the Sublime

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Ecumene•2001•Cited by: 2

    This paper considers how the search for the sublime in nineteenth-century Scotland found its expression in the voyage to St Kilda, a remote island archipelago west of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. It looks at the historical construction of St Kilda as an ultima Thule for Victorian travellers, a site which offered an incongruous set of discourses on antiquity and modernity; improvement and romance; evangelicalism and impiety. Grounding the early inte…

  • Scenes of Ecclesiastical Theatre in the Free Church of Scotland, 1981-2000

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Northern Scotland•2000•Cited by: 2

  • Breaking Points: Mediating Rupture and Discontinuity within Oksapmin Church Performances, Papua New Guinea

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Anthropologica•1969•Cited by: 2•References: 23

    Ongoing and increasingly contested debates within the anthropology of Christianity focus on the role of rupture and discontinuity within processes of conversion, arguing that Christians, particularly evangelical and Pentecostal, seek to break with and condemn their indigenous cultural and religious frameworks. Through an analysis of Oksapmin church performances, as well as drawing upon a range of comparative literature, I contribute to this theor…

  • Breaking Points: Mediating Rupture and Discontinuity within Oksapmin Church Performances, Papua New Guinea

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Anthropologica•1969•Cited by: 2•References: 23

    Ongoing and increasingly contested debates within the anthropology of Christianity focus on the role of rupture and discontinuity within processes of conversion, arguing that Christians, particularly evangelical and Pentecostal, seek to break with and condemn their indigenous cultural and religious frameworks. Through an analysis of Oksapmin church performances, as well as drawing upon a range of comparative literature, I contribute to this theor…

  • Stereotype attribution in two ethnic groups

    Open Access•Jack M Feldman, F Macdonald et al.•ARTICLE•International Journal of…•1980•References: 5

  • Viewing Highland Scotland: Ideology, representation and the ‘natural heritage’

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Area•1998•Cited by: 8•References: 6

    This paper reconsiders the role of conservation within the cultural politics of Highland Scotland. The crofting version of the natural heritage debate is regarded as counter‐hegemonic to dominant discourses of conservation and the sporting estate. That view is given precedence in defining the ecology and landscape of the Highlands

  • Reimagining Culture: Histories, Identities and the Gaelic Renaissance

    F Macdonald, Macdonald•REVIEW•Journal of the Royal Anthropologica…•1999•Cited by: 4

    Since the 1960s, policies to 'revive' minority cultures and languages have flourished. But what does it mean to have a 'cultural identity'? And are minorities as deeply attached to their languages and traditions as revival policies suppose? This book is a sophisticated analysis of responses to the 'Gaelic renaissance' in a Scottish Hebridean community. Its description of everyday conceptions of belonging and interpretations of cultural policy tak…

  • Scenes of Ecclesiastical Theatre in the Free Church of Scotland, 1981-2000

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Northern Scotland•2000•Cited by: 2

  • St Kilda and the Sublime

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Ecumene•2001•Cited by: 2

    This paper considers how the search for the sublime in nineteenth-century Scotland found its expression in the voyage to St Kilda, a remote island archipelago west of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. It looks at the historical construction of St Kilda as an ultima Thule for Victorian travellers, a site which offered an incongruous set of discourses on antiquity and modernity; improvement and romance; evangelicalism and impiety. Grounding the early inte…

  • Towards a spatial theory of worship: Some observations from Presbyterian Scotland

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Social & Cultural Geography•2002•Cited by: 21•References: 33

    In an attempt to add theoretical depth to the emerging literature on geographies of religion, this paper pays particular attention to the concepts of space and worship in relation to the practice of evangelical Presbyterianism in the Scottish Highlands. I argue that 'worship', a term which has no universal application in religious studies, has been thinly conceived in geographical literature and must be examined both as process and as practice. W…

  • Cultural Geographies in Practice: A rescue archaeology, Taransay, Scotland

    Open Access•Hayden Lorimer, Hester Parr et al.•ARTICLE•Cultural Geographies•2002•Cited by: 7

  • Paul Strand and the Atlanticist cold war

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•History of Photography•2004

    As far as the record shows, Strand never once mentioned those words, Marx, Marxism, Stalin, in public. Was he or wasn't he ... what? Actual facts regarding allegiances, commitments, activities, or memberships are quite rare and the picture unclear, more a matter of gossip, rumor, and fragments culled from scandalous FBI files. In any case, Strand's 'politics', in the sense of public statements, positions taken, or policies endorsed, are his own b…

  • Colloquium: Susan Parman's Scottish Crofters: A Historical Ethnography of a Celtic Village

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Journal of Scottish Historical…•2004•References: 8

  • The last outpost of Empire: Rockall and the Cold War

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Journal of Historical Geography•2006•Cited by: 9•References: 5

  • Geopolitics and 'the vision thing: Regarding Britain and America's first nuclear missile

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Transactions of the Institute of…•2006•Cited by: 42•References: 19

    Critical geopolitics, despite its radical ambitions, has been reluctant to shift its emphasis from the figure of the geopolitical tactician, 'decisive' events and the agency of the military-state. This paper, in common with recent work on 'popular geopolitics', offers a different agenda. It takes up the story of Britain and America's first nuclear missile - the US-made 'Corporal'- through the testimony of a self-described 'space-daft' schoolboy w…

  • Anti- Astropolitik — outer space and the orbit of geography

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Progress in Human Geography•2007•Cited by: 55•References: 26

    This paper aims to establish outer space as a mainstream concern of critical geography. More than half a century after humans first cast their instruments into orbit, contemporary human geography has been slow to explore the myriad connections that tie social life on Earth to the celestial realm. My starting point is a return to an early-modern geographical imagination that acknowledges the reciprocity between heaven and earth. Although other dis…

  • Space and the Atom: On the Popular Geopolitics of Cold War Rocketry

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Geopolitics•2008•Cited by: 12

    This paper considers the imbricated domains of space exploration and Cold War geopolitics by following the trajectory of the ‘Corporal’, the world's first guided missile authorised to carry a nuclear warhead. It examines the popular geopolitics of rocketry as both a technology of mass destruction and as a vehicle for the transcendent dreams of extra-terrestrial discovery. Avoiding both technical and statist accounts, the paper shows how these tec…

  • Observant States: Geopolitics and Visual Culture

    F Macdonald, Fraser Mcdonald et al.•BOOK•Observant States Geopolitics And…•2010

    Geopolitics is changing. The conduct of war and peace is being transformed by our increasing dependence on visual images and practices. Satellite surveillance, computer games, streaming video, retinal scanning and mobile phone cameras are just some of the technologies that are shaping contemporary geopolitics. From the horrors of 9/11 and Abu Ghraib to the mechanical, mundane functioning of airport biometrics, geopolitical truths are established …

  • Doomsday Fieldwork, or, How to Rescue Gaelic Culture? The Salvage Paradigm in Geography, Archaeology, and Folklore, 1955 - 62

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Environment and Planning D…•2011•Cited by: 11•References: 81

    Amid a resurgence of interest in histories of scientific fieldwork and in the geographies of the Cold War, this paper presents a comparative history of field practice across the distinct epistemic traditions of geography, archaeology, and folklore. The paper follows the intellectual practices of three research teams attempting to 'rescue' Gaelic culture from the development of a missile-testing station in the Scottish Hebrides. The aims of the pa…

  • The ruins of Erskine Beveridge

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Transactions of the Institute of…•2013•Cited by: 14•References: 37

    This is a narrative essay, the animating purpose of which is stylistic as much as analytic. It is a story; and, unusually for academic geography, the story is primary. The essay has no deferred object; it is not ‘about’ something more academic but nor does it abrogate the work of analysis. It narrates the story of the Scottish archaeologist Erskine Beveridge and his family, as told through a prolonged encounter with the ruins of his house situate…

  • Always been Christian: Mythic Conflation among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Anthropological Forum•2014•Cited by: 10•References: 34

    Across the world and throughout history, people have negotiated religious and social change by marshalling the mythological resources at their disposal. In cases of conversion to Christianity, this dynamic has often taken the form of constructing an isomorphism between traditional mythical narratives and those learned from the Bible, a manifestation of the process I here call mythic conflation . In this article I explore how the Oksapmin of the W…

  • Lucifer Is Behind Me: The Diabolisation of Oksapmin Witchcraft as Negative Cosmological Integration

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Canberra Anthropology•2015•Cited by: 9•References: 26

    This paper examines the diabolisation of Oksapmin tamam (here glossed as 'witchcraft') as an example of negative cosmological integration. The article takes as its point of departure Robbins's model of cultural syncretism developed in a series of recent papers, wherein diabolisation occurs as people insert those aspects of their indigenous religion that do not contravene the Christian God's paramount creative power into the Christian cosmos as re…

  • From Blood to Oil: Mining, Cosmology, and Human Sacrifice in Central New Guinea

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Oceania•2016

    This article explores the intersection between cosmological history and mining geography among the Oksapmin of West Sepik Province. I show that the recent intrusion of mining activity into the local area has catalysed a revival of indigenous religious traditions to explain the occurrence and ownership of the precious materials believed to exist within the ground. Through an analysis of these parts of local cosmological history used to explain con…

  • Women, mobile phones, and M16s: Contemporary New Guinea highlands warfare

    Open Access•F Macdonald, Jonathan Kirami•ARTICLE•The Australian Journal of…•2017

    This paper reports upon a series of recent developments in New Guinea highlands warfare. Building upon existing literature highlighting the deep influence of modernity within this context, we draw attention to two particular developments yet to be reported in the literature and which appear to be of special significance. Through an analysis of Aiya warfare, Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea, we document the direct and increasing invol…

  • Magic: A Theory from the South, by Ernesto De Martino

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Anthropological Forum•2017

    This article reviews the book: “Magic: A Theory from the South”, by Ernesto De Martino, translated and annotated by Dorothy Louise Zinn

  • Cosmology and Crisis in Oksapmin, Papua New Guinea

    Open Access•F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Oceania•2017•Cited by: 2•References: 22

    This article explores Oksapmin imaginings of two interrelated crises: the temporary closure of the Ok Tedi gold and copper mine and a prolonged drought, both of which occurred in Papua New Guinea throughout 2015. Local interpretations were notable for assigning causality to a variety of indigenous magical and spiritual forces despite the fact that the Oksapmin have been evangelical Christians for over 50 years and have more recently been influenc…

  • Melanesia burning: Religious revolution in the western Pacific

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Journal of the Polynesian Society•2019•Cited by: 3

    In the history of Pacific Christianity, the explosion of revival activity within Melanesia during the 1970s remains an untold story. Within this regional spiritual upheaval, ecstatic Pentecostalist phenomena spread with unprecedented rapidity, intensity and geographical scope. As a result of these movements, Christianity assumed an importance in Melanesia in a way it never had before, as local congregations redefined their church life and spiritu…

  • God Was Here First: Value, Hierarchy, and Conversion in a Melanesian Christianity

    F Macdonald•ARTICLE•Ethnos•2019•Cited by: 9•References: 25

    Throughout the world, conversion to evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity produces what Joel Robbins calls 'duplex cultural formations', whereby surviving aspects of local cosmology and worldview are brought into tension with paramount Christian values through a process of critical evaluation. I explore the dynamics of this process within Oksapmin understandings of human and cosmic origins. Traditional anthropogonic models explaining the emerg…

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